The present invention relates to a machine for processing paste-like food materials into long fibers of food. More particularly, the present invention relates to a machine for forming, for example, a paste-like or gelatinous minced fish meat product into long fibers to produce a crab-arm-like texture, adductor-muscle-like texture or similarly textured foods. The machine is also applicable to processing of other foods such as noodles.
The conventional roller cutters used for cutting minced fish meat gelatinous foods into elongated fibers or strings use a method wherein a gelatinous food sheet is fed between a first roller having a plurality of parallel alternating annular ribs and grooves on its surface, and a second roller also having ribs and grooves corresponding to the first roller surface. The ribs of one roller are aligned with the grooves of the other roller, and the sheet is cut by a shearing action between the corners of the ribs of the two rollers. Accordingly, there is a machining limit to the reduction in the width of the ribs and grooves, and it is difficult to produce very thin and long fibers of foods. In the Patent Provisional Publication No. SHO-58-5169, an arrangement is disclosed, similar to that described above, wherein a sheet of food material is fed between an upper roller cutter having a large number of annular ribs and grooves and a lower roller cutter having a large number of annular ribs and grooves, and the sheet is sliced or shredded by the shearing action between the pairs of ribs. Further, a technique is described wherein a plurality of sets of such upper and lower rollers are arranged in series with their ribs out of phase to repeat a plurality of slicings and thereby reduce the width of fibers.
The above prior art arrangements are also shown in FIGS. 3 and 4. In FIG. 3, an upper roller A is provided with ribs E which form grooves C therebetween, and the lower roller B has similar ribs F and grooves D. The ribs of one of the rollers are matched with the grooves of the other roller and the corners of the ribs are closely adjacent each other to achieve a shearing action between the corners to shred a sheet of food material. As shown in FIG. 4, a plurality of sets of the rollers A, B and A', B' are arranged with their ribs and grooves offset or out of phase so that the food material 3 is shredded a second time.
When cutting of the food is effected by such shearing, it may have an adverse effect on the production; the cut surfaces of the food will be crushed during cutting and thereby become pastry, and the cut surfaces will tend to stick to auxiliary equipment during the ensuing transfer and take-up processes. This may result in a possible winding of several fibers around the equipment on the production line, and possibly a change in the appearance of the final product.
In the above-mentioned prior art, there are also the problems that it is difficult to increase the precision of machining of the roller grooves, and that a large number of machining operations are required to make the grooves of a roller.
Further, since the shredded fibers of the food material stick in the grooves of the rollers and are caught in the rollers, it is necessary to provide a comb plate to scrape the food material off from the rollers. This presents a problem because metal powder is generated from the rubbing contact between the comb plate and the rollers and the powder will mix with the food product.
It is a primary objective of the present invention to provide a food processing machine which solves the above-mentioned problems.